the noblest of the Rabbis. Yet Saul of Tarsus was a Jew, not merely trained at the feet of

the great Gamaliel, "that sun in Israel," but deeply imbued with the Jewish spirit and

lore; insomuch that long afterwards, when he is writing of the deepest mysteries of

Christianity, we catch again and again expressions that remind us of some that occur in

the earliest record of that secret Jewish doctrine, which was only communicated to the

most select of the select sages.49

And this same love of honest labour, the same spirit of manly independence, the same

horror of trafficking with the law, and using it either "as a crown or as a spade," was

certainly characteristic of the best Rabbis. Quite different in this respect also--far

asunder as were the aims of their lives --were the feelings of Israel from those of the

Gentiles around. The philosophers of Greece and Rome denounced manual labour as

something degrading; indeed, as incompatible with the full exercise of the privileges of a

citizen. Those Romans who allowed themselves not only to be bribed in their votes, but

expected to be actually supported at the public expense, would not stoop to the

defilement of work. The Jews had another aim in life, another pride and ambition. It is

difficult to give an idea of the seeming contrasts united in them. Most aristocratic and

exclusive, contemptuous of mere popular cries, yet at the same time most democratic and

liberal; law-abiding, and with the profoundest reverence for authority and rank, and yet

with this prevailing conviction at bottom, that all Israel were brethren, and as such stood

on precisely the same level, the eventual differences arising only from this, that the mass

failed to realise what Israel's real vocation was, and how it was to be attained, viz., by

theoretical and practical engagement with the law, compared to which everything else

was but secondary and unimportant.

But this combination of study with honest manual labour--the one to support the

other--had not been always equally honoured in Israel. We distinguish here three

periods. The law of Moses evidently recognised the dignity of labour, and this spirit of

the Old Testament appeared in the best times of the Jewish nation. The book of

Proverbs, which contains so many sketches of what a happy, holy home in Israel had

been, is full of the praises of domestic industry. But the Apocrypha, notably

Ecclesiasticus (xxxviii. 24-31), strike a very different key-note. Analysing one by one

every trade, the contemptuous question is put, how such "can get wisdom?" This

"Wisdom of Jesus the Son of Sirach" dates from about two centuries before the present

era. It would not have been possible at the time of Christ or afterwards, to have written

in such terms of "the carpenter and workmaster," of them "that cut and grave seals," of

"the smith," or "the potter"; nor to have said of them: "They shall not be sought for in

public counsel, nor sit high in the congregation; they shall not sit on the judges' seat,

nor understand the sentence of judgment; they cannot declare justice and judgment;

and they shall not be found where parables are spoken" (Ecclus xxxviii. 33). For, in point

of fact, with few exceptions, all the leading Rabbinical authorities were working at some

trade, till at last it became quite an affectation to engage in hard bodily labour, so that

one Rabbi would carry his own chair every day to college, while others would drag

heavy rafters, or work in some such fashion. Without cumbering these pages with

names, it is worth mentioning, perhaps as an extreme instance, that on one occasion a

man was actually summoned from his trade of stone-cutter to the high-priestly office. To

be sure, that was in revolutionary times. The high-priests under the Herodian dynasty

were of only too different a class, and their history possesses a tragic interest, as

bearing on the state and fate of the nation. Still, the great Hillel was a wood-cutter, h is

rival Shammai a carpenter,; and among the celebrated Rabbis of after times we find

shoemakers, tailors, carpenters, sandalmakers, smiths, potters, builders, etc.--in short,

every variety of trade. Nor were they ashamed of their manual labour. Thus it is recorded

of one of them, that he was in the habit of discoursing to his students from the top of a

cask of his own making, which he carried every day to the academy.

We can scarcely wonder at this, since it was a Rabbinical principle, that "whoever does

not teach his son a trade is as if he brought him up to be a robber" (Kidd. 4.14). The

Midrash gives the following curious paraphrase of Ecclesiastes 9:9, "Behold, the life